Two little dead birds
by Shauds02
Summary: Jason Todd shows up in Gotham just a bit earlier than he planned, early enough to catch wind of another bird whose wings have been clipped and get her away from Black Mask. He never thought it would earn him a partner, and with the Nyssa Raatko's Society causing trouble in both Gotham and Bludhaven, they'll need all the help they can find. Pre52
1. Back in town

They say the difference between comedy and tragedy is timing.

Red Hood had seen enough, felt enough that – after he'd beaten some penance out of the guilty parties – he could find most of it darkly amusing at least.

He'd had plans when he'd come to Gotham, so, so many plans. Most of them based around his predictions for what the place would have been like in a few months. It was due to a certain psychotic sister of Talia's that he'd pushed those plans up. Reworking some of them had been a bitch he'd been ready to curse the universe for.

Now he found himself wondering about the timing.

There was a new Robin, another on top of his old replacement, a girl who'd at least had the time to enter adolescence before she'd donned the costume. Red Hood could remember how close to amusing he had found it; female, older teen, blonde, she'd had zero in common with any of her predecessors.

Then he'd found out who she was. Daughter of a jailed criminal and a drug addicted mother from a poor area of Gotham, suburbs instead of the heart of the city, but it was close enough. He'd almost scrapped the idea of beating the ever living shit out of the newest Robin, to teach Bruce a lesson about keeping an eye on the kids he got involved in his little war… almost. Being a girl wasn't going to get her out of that.

Then he'd found he couldn't find her. The boy was suddenly back in the costume and there was no sign of long blond hair whipping anywhere about the city. Nothing on the hacked comms, nothing on the streets.

She was gone, missing, not a sign of her anywhere in the city, no matter how hard he looked, and he looked everywhere. It didn't help that no one else seemed to be looking for her at all. Granted they were all very busy with the citywide gang war that had erupted overnight, but he'd been expecting at least some chatter on where she'd gone off to.

That was how he found himself in a dressed like a run of the mill Park Rower, getting his ass beat by a would be mugger. It was all too easy to attract the wrong kind of attention, would have been harder not too. Timing had been perfect, flash some money where he was sure they'd be patrolling soon.

The patrol route he'd chosen had been given a lot of thought, and he'd come to the conclusion that Batman was too much of a risk, he couldn't trust himself not to proceed with plan 'beat the ever loving shit out of the replacement' if Robin showed up, and he'd heard ' _things_ ' about the new Batgirl.

That left Nightwing, who was in Gotham for who-the-fuck-knew with some new vigilante woman (cut him a break, he hadn't had time yet to gather all of that information) that gave Red Hood all the wrong vibes.

He grunted as he took a punch to his gut that almost had him puking up his breakfast, and yeah, he was definitely going to pay that guy back when he didn't 'need' to seem pathetic.

The moron was saying something that the ringing in his ears made it hard for Red Hood to hear, but he could get the gist of it from tone and the angry swinging of a knife alone. He really hoped he didn't have to get stabbed for his info.

The knife was pulled back and a shadow appeared above them. "Bout fucking time." Red Hood wheezed, clutching his ribs. His 'mugger' looked surprised, but then he was slammed into a wall and got karmas payback for the beatdown he's been delivering not long ago.

' _Oooohh_.' That was brutal enough that even Red Hood felt a little sympathy – not really, but he could pretend for the sake of what was left of his conscience.

"Need a doctor, go to Thompkins clinic." Nightwing said coldly, already getting out his grapple.

That… was unexpected, since when didn't ' _Nightwing_ ' stop to comfort an innocent victim of crime?

"Hey, hold up." Hood reached for the original Boy Wonder's ankle, wincing as it brought more attention to his bruised ribs. Fuck it, if he didn't need believability he would have worn some kind of armor and he wasn't getting nothing out of that pain. Crying out and counterproductively curling an arm around his midsection seemed to do the trick though, got the guy to stick around at least a few seconds at least.

"You need an ambulance?" He asked, getting closer, now with a hint of the worry Hood would have expected in his eyes.

Maybe a little too close. Hood quickly turned his head away just in case Nightwing was feeling nostalgic and recognized him under the fake beard.

"Jus' wonderin'." He turned his inner Gotham accent up to eleven. "What ever happened ta that girl Robin, ain't seen 'er in…"

"If you do, tell her she's not getting off from all of this lightly." Dick said, and then, with a shot of his grapple he was gone.

"Ass." Hood watched the spot for a few seconds before straightening his greasy denim jacket. So she was sitting it out then, maybe in hiding from the Bats, and wasn't that just an interesting tidbit. His 'mugger' got up and tried to make another grab for the cash, but all he got was a fist to his face that would have 'him' needing to see a doctor. If he could find one that wasn't already filled to capacity, in that hellhole if a city.

Hood shook the blood off his hand as he walked. He felt a smile curling at his lips when he imagined the reaction he would get if he found her before they did. Plans were already forming in his head for how he would use her.

His favorite involved a warehouse, the joker and a whole lot of TNT too. Surely it would be more interesting to give Bruce two Robins to choose over the Joker.

Another part of him that he didn't want to admit to hoped that having more at stake would make it easier for Bruce to make the decision Jason needed him to make. However unlikely it was.


	2. Out of time

Stephanie didn't remember what had happened at first. She thought she was still with Selina, Catwoman, that she has to get up and _'do'_ something about all the trouble she'd caused, find some way to make up for it, anything. The universe let her keep thinking that for a little, while, but that only made it worse when the realization finally hit her.

It came to her in pieces. The chill of manacles on her wrists. The echoing chink of the chains when she tried to change her position. All she could see when she opened her eyes were some blurry yellow lights that made it through whatever it was that her head had been stuffed into.

All of her weight was hanging on her arms and shoulders, her feet dangling just a fraction of an inch off the ground, just high enough to make stretching down her toes to take some of the weight ' _very_ ' uncomfortable. If the lack of feeling in her arms and the sharp, stabbing pain between her shoulder blades was any indication, she must have been hanging there for hours. Ha, good, the more time she'd been hanging there, the longer the others have had to find… She got her feet under her and put her weight on her toes, taking some of the strain off her shoulders.

They thought she was still with Catwoman, didn't they? Where she was supposed to be, where Batman had left her and told her to stay until he'd fixed everything. No one had the time to be looking for her.

Her heart rate sped up and she tugged on the chains, testing them for some way to get out. This was just another crazy, right. If he were going to kill her, he would have done it by now. Someone would come for her eventually, and nothing would happen to her until then. Just a little more, she just had to hold out a little more.

A harsh, deep chuckle, like a saw splintering through dry wood reached her ears. "Finally awake?" Light suddenly flooded her eyes, blinding her as the man ripped the bag off her head and left it to drop to a soggy puddle on the ground. Stephanie flinched back, tried to shield her eyes from the brightness, but hard, bony hands cupped the back of her head almost gently if not for the harsh way the fingers pulled at her hair and forced her head back to the front. "None of that now, you're a guest in my house, it's ' _very'_ rude to ignore your host."

Stephanie's eyes split open, only a little at firsts and then blown wide when she got a look at the hideous, black charred skin stretched taught along his skull like, a gaping hole where a nose should have been. She kicked out, tried to get that ' _thing'_ as far away from her as possible.

"That's more like it." His hands tightened further in her hair and he ' _pulled_ ' so hard she thought he's pull her scalp from her head and angled her neck back painfully to make her look at him at the scalpel held daintily between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.

Her terrified reflection gaped back at her from the gleaming steel blade.

She just had to hold on long enough for someone to find her, just had to…

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The scalpel had been first, but it hadn't been the worst, so sharp she'd barely felt the cuts at first. He'd taken her hand in his, held it palm up while he asked her questions, so many questions, most of which she didn't even know the answers to in the first place. Every tendon, every nerve he cut through he called by name, long strings of scientific jargon, he told her how much it would hurt before he made the incision. Even after he'd doused the cuts in something that burned so badly Steph could have sworn he'd set her on fire, when she'd screamed herself so hoarse she didn't think her vocal cords would ever be the same. It still wasn't the worst.

They'd started looking for her by now, she was sure of it. It had been long enough for them to find a fix, right?

No, the worst had come what felt like a forever later, when she'd grown so accustomed to the feel of her skin splitting open, to the blood falling in her face and soaking through her closes, drying and chafing against her skin, the feel of her bones grinding together. He'd worked on her for hours brought her second away from falling into the calm of oblivion before he stopped, doused her in alcohol and left her alone for hours with that sack over her head until he'd returned and repeated the process. It all blurred together after a while, and Steph couldn't have picked up where one thing had begun and another had ended if her life depended on it, each and every one making her think nothing could possibly hurt more.

He grew impatient. Threatened her with pain beyond what she could have imagine, as if he thought she could have imagined ' _any_ ' of what he'd done to her already . Steph told him to drop dead. He didn't like that.

Any second now. Oracle had already picked up Steph's trail on her network of cameras. She'd held on so long. Any second now.

The shrieking of the power drill as it ' _tore_ ' through her flesh, ground her bones and marrow both, set every nerve in Stephanie's body screaming at her to do anything, say anything to make it ' _stop_ '. If he'd stopped right then, if she'd been able to form ' _any_ ' words that might have been heard over the drill, could have made any sound, period, other than the screams that made him grin, his yellowed, bulging eyes glowing with delight at the pain searing though her.

Where were they. The couldn't have been that mad at her right? Why were they taking so long? Didn't they know she was sorry. She was SORRY! She begged for them to come for her, but the screaming wouldn't STOP!

That was the worst, and when he left her, promising something even worse to celebrate his return, goddamn her, Stephanie believed him, she believed, and the part of her that broke then, she knew she'd never get back.

How much was left?

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They weren't coming for her. The realizatio set in slowly over the hours and hours and hours passed and he didn't come back. In the quiet, past the fragmented whispers of her mind, the thought entered that maybe, just maybe if they'd forgotten about her, he would too, convinced that if she was quiet enough he might never come back, she just had to be…

The chains clinked and the fronts of her feet, already scraped bloody, brushed against the rough carpet. Fuck, he could have heard that, she needed to stop her body from swaying, but her feet refused to obey her commands to so much as twitch, never mind supporting her weight. If she could have done that, she would have been able to feel her shoulders, could have eased the deep sitting pain between her shoulder blades even if just a little.

Steph closed her eyes and tried to think about literally anything else. Tim. Tim with his sweet, shy grins whenever she got real close to him. His excitement when he narrated the Wizards and Warlocks campaigns he played with his school friends. When he got really into a case and that serious, broody line appeared between his eyes.

' _Drip, drip, drip'_

That was a new sound, or maybe it had been there all along and she was only now taking note of it. That meant there had to be water somewhere nearby, right? God, she was so thirsty. Or maybe it was just more of her blood, it was probably more of her blood, from the stinging slashes that covered her body, ran down her limbs and coagulated at her joins, leaving them itchy even stiffer. NO, something else, she was supposed to be thinking of something else.

Cass. The pain could have been from one of her sparring sessions with Cass. The other girl ' _did_ ' get really rough sometimes, but it was okay it was still fun. They'd laugh it off, and have a snack, and when Steph had rested up they'd play a game of hide and seek, or rooftop tag.

The chains swayed again and Steph whimpered at the pain that laced through her shoulders, spread throughout most of the rest of her from there.

There was nothing she would have done to get that back. Even if she never set foot in the Batcave again, if they hated her forever and burned every suit she owned. Just to see them one more time. Steph tried to make herself believe that if she just opened her eyes, they'd be there, right there in front of her.

At the same time, she was terrified that if she did, _'he'd'_ be there instead. He'd done that once, waited for her to wake up and she'd opened her eyes to his frozen grin, crazed euphoria at the mere anticipation of what was to come. She didn't want to see that again, never wanted to ever have to see that again if she never slept a minute for the rest of however long she had left to live.

But then, what did it matter what she wanted? She'd wanted to be a superhero, then even that hadn't been enough for her and she'd wanted to be _'Robin',_ had worked so hard towards that goal, harder than she'd ever worked before and for what?

How many people, good, innocent people were suffering right now because of her? Because she'd gotten uppity and thought she could be more than she was ever meant to be. What made her so special that she should be safe and happy after she'd caused all that? She didn't deserve Tim, or Cass, or Robin, or ' _any'_ of it, any of them.

Tears built up around her eyes, how she couldn't have said when she was so dehydrated every breath scraped she was trying to swallow a mouthful of sandpaper strips.

She wanted to see her mother again. Even if she never got anything else, even if she had to endure this for years and years, she wanted her mom, but even that was too much to ask for, wasn't it. How much longer before she broke completely and told him everything?

A sob tore its way out of her throat and turned quickly into a series of coughs that shook her whole body, setting every torn nerve and severed bit of flesh ablaze all over again. It was agony and the coughing just wouldn't stop, she couldn't breathe and it wouldn't STOP.

Tears stung her cheeks and more blood was dribbling from her chin. Oh god, he was going to hear her, be reminded she was there and come back to make it hurt even worse. Stephanie didn't even care who saw her as she renewed her almost forgotten struggles to free her hands, to break them out of the shackles, just one. Just so she could gap the few feet between her and the gleaming tools lined up so neatly on that little table he left out to remind her of him while he was gone.

There was a crash, wood splintering and Stephanie's head whipped towards the sound. He was angry, soon he'd be screaming, stomping into the room and, turning whatever new torture he'd thought up on her. The scalpel he'd used to slice up her fingers was ' _right_ ' there. If she could just ' _reach_ ' it.

Just a glimpse of black and she closed her eyes, skewed them shut so tightly it tore open the sealed cuts along her head and let fresh blood dribble down her temples. The footsteps that followed the cuts were quiet, so quiet she had to strain her ears to pick them up. There was a gasp and they stopped completely.

Steph waited, but nothing came. Her eyes slipped open and instead of Black Mask with a knife, or a drill, or a hot iron, there was a boy in a plain black hoody. The wide gaping teal eyes that peeked though messy curled bangs reflected only a small amount of the horror Steph felt at seeing him there.

She wanted to scream at him to get out. To get away before Black Mask came back. That way she could have saved at least one, just one person for all the dozens she must have killed by now, but her lips wouldn't form the words.

His hand reached out towards her, gloved fingertips barely brushing against her cheeks, the only touch she'd felt in forever that hadn't come along with pain, then he drew back as though her touch had burned in and stumbled back. Steph found her voice.

"Don't go." She screamed, pulling on her chains, hating herself for every word that crawled its way up her throat, but she couldn't stop, and he was still leaving, he'd ducked out of the stupidly elaborate doorway and she was all alone again, so she begged and cried, ugly sobs that broke her broken body even further. Knowing all the while that it was useless. "Please don't leave me here! Please, please, please help me! Don't leave me here with him, please I'll do anything." Her voice died of until all that broke their way through were whispers of,"Please, please, please, please…"

The boy appeared again, a pair of bolt cutters in hand. He walked towards her, his icy expression set in stone and she fell silent. He grabbed a chair as he approached and slid it under her, giving her a way to get her weight on her feet instead of the chains. For a second it felt so good, the feeling rushed back to her arms and Steph had to bite back a cry.

"… fine, it's not that bad." He muttered, his voice deep and gravely, but even as he ran his hands over the chains at her wrists, breaking loose flakes of blood that broke off and fluttered down to settle on her shoulders and chest, before he fit the cutters into place. She knew enough to tell when someone was talking to themselves and not her, but she took some comfort in his words anyway.

The chains snapped and Stephanie toppled over, unable to keep herself upright without them. The boy caught her before she could hit the ground and though the jarring motion brought attention back to the wreck that was her body, she welcomed the arms wrapping around her.

The idea that _'he'_ might be what Black Mask had sent to hurt her with doesn't even cross her mind until he knelt with her on the blood soaked carpet and brushed his hands lightly along her arms, pausing at each visible injury, then repeated the process with her legs.

Steph brought up the strength to attempt a struggle, not that it had much effect in her weakened state. His eyes snapped to lock with hers and he pulled his hands away, held them up besides his head. "You're okay, I'm here to help." His eyes lost that icy sheen, became warm and bright and earnest, as his stiff posture melted away. "You're gonna be okay."

There was something so familiar about the shift, blatantly artificial as it was, about the boy, that she found herself believing him. She held her arms to him and he sighed out of soft puff of air that brushed against her neck when he leaned over to pick her up. She'd just let herself hope again when he stood up and saw what his large body had been blocking from her view.

Black Mask crept up behind them, a steel bat raised above his head. Steph tried to shout out a warning, but she was too late. Instead of spinning to face the threat, the boy curled over her to protect her from the strike.

He dropped Steph and she went rolling. She held out the one arm that was working to stop herself. He was lying on the ground, blood running down his neck and a gun clutched limply in his hand, he raised the weapon, but before he could fire the bat came down again and knocked it clean out of his hand, clattering to the floor and skidding far out of his reach.

"Oh, we got a hero here, huh?" Black Mask loosened his tie and grunted as he swung again. "Thought you'd save the little girl huh?" Another swing, hard and brutal. "Thought you'd ' _mess'_ with my ' _stuff_ '!"

Steph lunged for the weapon, already foreseeing how this would end. She wouldn't be responsible for another death. Wouldn't let him die because she'd been too weak to get herself out of the danger she'd thrown herself into.

The boy's pained grunts at least proved he was alive, Stephanie's hands closed around the barrel of the gun and she fired of a shot at random, pulling Masks attention to her.

"Leave him alone!" She demanded, her heat beating rapidly in her throat as she leveled the gun at Mask.

He blinked once then, burst out laughing and raised the bat again, completely dismissing her. "You're not a killer, don't have it in you." He swung down again, aiming for the boy's head. Steph pulled the trigger.

Both Mask and the boy reared back, shock blatant on their features as a red spot bloomed on one of Black Mask's filthy white sleeves.

Steph used the table to pull herself to her feet, knocking over the tools laid atop it in the process. "I said," She gritted her teeth, the sight of the bloody boy, dazed and struggling to pull himself up driving her heart rate, the adrenaline that flooded her system into overdrive . "Leave him alone!"

Black Mask growled and charged at Stephanie. Her body reacted in her intense panic more than her brain did, and before she could think of the consequences, of what she was ' _doing_ ' she squeezed the trigger again, then again and again. Each shot pushed him back, halted his progress more and more. The flash of each bullet lighting the room for one brilliant moment and blinding them for the next.

Her tormentor was an unmoving lump on the ground, and a soft ' _click'_ replaced the BANG every time she pulled the trigger, still Steph couldn't stop. Tears blurring her vision so baldy she barely made out the shape that approached from the edges of her vision, unable to take her eyes off the mess of bleeding flesh before her.

' _Click.'_

Her fingers squeezed around the trigger before his face swam into view.

' _Click, click, click, click, click…'_

"Calm down Stephanie, it's over, it's okay, you're safe…" he punctuated each step with another soft, useless reassurance. A hand moved up slowly, to the still clicking gun and wrapped around the muzzle, gentle, but firm as he pushed it down. "He's gone, he's not gonna hurt you ever again, not gonna hurt anyone."

He blocked her view of the corpse and she wanted to scream at him to move aside, to get out of her way so she could, so she could…

Stephanie sobbed, the gun falling from limp fingers into his hand as she fell forwards and lets the boy wrap his arms around her. He was warm and smelled of gunpowder and cigarretes and... and paper, it was almost enough to over power the stench of blood and sweat and everything else she didnt even want to think of. She didnt want to think of anything anymore.

"I got ya, you're okay." He hooked a hand behind her knees and lifted her up off the ground, keeping a her head pressed into his chest and blinding her to where she was being carried off to.

It didn't matter; she was too far-gone to process anything she would have seen, not with that room, the bloody corpse they left bleeding out there, branded vividly to the insides of her eyelids.

Why hadn't she listened when they'd told her she'd fail? Why hadn't she just stayed safe at home?


	3. Awake

' _Drip, drip, drip'_

They hadn't come for her.

Awareness crept over Steph like a spider, a disconcerting prickling moving over her skin, barely there, barely noticeable, something that should have been easy to ignore, but the wrongness accompanying it made that impossible.

The dripping was still there, but something was different, something was missing and she could put her finger on it. Her finger, her shoulders. Her breathing picked up, chest aching, it felt like someone had yanked her shoulders out of their sockets, and then stabbed her with a thousand needles just to go the extra mile. Pain permeated every inch of her, every pore, every cell. Right down to her bones. She still didn't understand, for a few blessed moments the pain was all there was, she was lucky she didn't understand.

' _Drip, drip, drip'_

Then she was stupid enough to try figuring it out, and so like a spider, awareness bit down. She saw Black Mask, lying on the floor, blood across her cheeks, pooling on the ground, spreading, spreading towards her. The cold metal in her hands, and the stench in the air and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, something, somewhere was screaming and that was all she could hear.

She didn't heat the crash or the slew of curses, or the door slamming open but like magic the heavy footsteps did. Her head snapped up and there, in the shadows he stood. Her mind filled in the blanks, the blood oozing from the many bullet holes in his chest and the fury in his wide, yellow eyes sunken into the his black face.

The screaming stopped, Steph's throat raw and chokes an incapable of releasing a sound, not even to beg him not to hurt her anymore, not even able to suck in a breath. He's reached her in two steps and warmth enveloped her.

She got a glimpse of his face, not black and hard, but incredibly pale, the flesh of his arms smattered with ugly purple and slashes of crimson. Gunpowder and cigarettes and paper.

Before she knew it, she was screaming again, if the soft, keening sound she made could have been called, that.

"S'okay, gotta breathe with me, c'mon, s'okay." There was a hand at the back of her neck, pushing down in circles, rubbing away some small portion of the ache. "In one, out for two." She tried to follow his pattern, to breathe along with him, but for what felt like an eternity, all she was capable of was more screaming.

The weight of his arms around her never left, eventually she felt the soft sheets against her raw flesh, the smell of disinfectant and cinnamon that blended in along with his. There was light pouring in from a window from which she could see the smoggy sky. His voice chipped in every so often, calm and soothing, with an edge that that could have unsettled her, but only made it feel more real.

It was real; she'd been rescued from that room but by who, for what had it cost her? What happened to her now?

"I murdered him." She murmured, her voice chipped and deep. They'd never take her back, oh God, when they found her, when she had to see them again and see what she'd done, what they had to know by now she'd done, how could she ever go home again? Batman already hated her, he wouldn't let her anywhere near either Cass or Tim again, he was going to lock her away. She wished she were dead, god she wished she'd gotten her hands on that scalpel so she could be…

"No!" The soothing motion at the back of her head was gone and she was pulled away from the warmth, from the only comfort she'd had in so long. It was that pointy eared fucker's fault this happened to you, not yours." His hands were holding her face, forcing her to look at the shape of his face, blurry from the tears that continued falling down her cheeks, but his eyes were clear as anything could ever hope to be. He was angry, so, so angry and it made breathing so much harder. "That, what happed down there wasn't fucking murder. "You _'saved'_ the dozens, maybe fucking hundreds of people he would have hurt, innocent people, just like he hurt you."

Steph whimpered at the pain the position caused her already strained neck and his hands shifted down to her shoulders. "I'm sorry." She sobbed, her swollen hands reaching for him, for any amount of warmth.

"No, look at me." He demanded, and tapped the bottom of her chin to make her look up. She blinked away tears and got her first clear look at his face since she'd woken up; there was dark bruising around his eyes, his head swaddled in thick bandages. The image of Black Mask swinging that bat at him had her turning away again, but he turned her gaze back, gentler this time though the fire in his eyes hadn't gone out at all, something green flickering along the edges.

"This didn't happen cause you deserved it, it happened cause of the fucking shit sticks that think they got the right to do this to people, and the moral bastards who pat themselves on the back for doing fuck all about it and letting kids get involved. Batman tries to take you _'any-fucking-where'_ and I'll put his head on a pike. You understand?"

Steph didn't believe it because she couldn't, she tried not to, because if that was true then why was she even here? It wasn't Batman's fault she hadn't listened; he'd tried to keep her out and told her to go home so many times, right up until she'd made herself Robin, he'd tried. It had to be her fault, because there was always another way, that's what he'd taught her and what she was supposed to do and the boy couldn't – again she heard the nausea-inducing crack of the bat hitting his head – he would have died too.

She nodded anyway, if only because he wouldn't let her do anything else, anything but agree. It worked and he let her lean forward to bury her face in her chest she reveled in the warmth despite the sharp pain the movement sent rippling through her nerves. She didn't believe there was anything this kid, who couldn't have been much older than her, could do to stop anyone from coming after her for everything she had caused. For the blood on her hands, but it was nice to pretend, it was nice to feel like there was someone on her side even if she didn't know anything about him, even if he didn't understand.

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With her face pressed against him, she couldn't see the hatred that burned in his eyes long after she'd succumbed to her exhaustion.

Jason laid her down carefully, more gentle than he's been with anything in years.

He refitted the I.V lines the girl had pulled out, checked that her bandages were still in place before he brought he covered her up with the thin comforter, it did nothing to conceal just how much damage had been done to her. The gashes and bruising and chips in her bones, all positioned to hurt her as much as possible with the lowest chance of fatality, to hurt so much more than that bastard could have possibly needed to get what he wanted out of her.

A kid, a fucking kid that shouldn't have been anywhere near that kind of hell. He stumbled out of the room before he started breaking things, because wouldn't that just be a fucking perfect thing to wake up to after everything else.

He collapsed against a wall in the empty living room and slid down to the musty floor, a smile, part bitter, part something like pride, curling at his lips. And she's still had the strength to get up and put the bastard down. Thank fuck for that, he thought, his fingers trialing along the edges of his bandages. He didn't want to think about what he owed them for that surgeon he'd brought in.

None of them had been looking for her, were they looking now? He didn't know and he couldn't trust himself to go out and see. She must have been there for days and they hadn't found her. How had she been out without backup? There were so many kids running around Gotham now, they had a whole fucking network to keep track of each other and this still happened.

When he'd been robin, he'd barely been allowed out of Bruce's sight and now this? Once was enough, this should have never happened again. He looked down at his scarred palms, curled his fingers over them, making a weak fist before stretching them out again and repeating the process, using nerves and muscles that would have rotted away by now, as he thought.

Being replaced had stung badly enough, that had ripped into him like a freight train. He'd assumed that Bruce at least gave a fuck about the kids he was dragging into his war. He wasn't sure whether or not the reality he was facing now made the hurt more or less, wasn't sure what he should be feeling about the how unsure he was, what that meant.

What he was sure of was that Bruce had never been like that before, even if it had been a lie, at least it had been good enough for Jason to believe in it for years. Never once had he been as afraid as that girl seemed to be.

Jason set his hands down on the grounds besides him, resting his head against the wall and angling it towards Bristol. "The fuck happened to you Bruce."

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The house was dark, when Batman's cape trailed over the splinters of what had once been a half-rotten door, fabric snagging on the sharp edges and breaking them away. It didn't slow him down. With no more leads to follow and no hope of uncovering more in any amount of time, just minutes ago, he'd been terrified of this being another dead end.

Now, making his way through the hallway, growing ever closer towards an unmistakable stench, he prayed this wasn't where he found her.

The door over the stairway leading down to the darkness had been shattered too. He descended the stairway, barely daring to breathe, his unease growing with every step, now he could hear the buzzing and he lost all hope that what he found down there would be alive.

The corpse wasn't hers, he could tell at a glance. Even if not for the size difference, the charred face gave it away when decomposition would have rendered it unidentifiable. Chains, as gleaming from the top as they were filthy halfway down, hung from the ceiling, dark, disgusting brown splotches beneath them. He moved to the freshest marks, the ones that were almost red, the tray and various sharp instruments scattered about it. His eyes roamed about the room, looking for another body, or a clue as to where it had gone, with this much blood…

His eyes stopped on the power drill, still plugged in and hanging from the wall. There were scraps of purple wedged into the drill bit, strands of blonde hair. His stomach dropped out from under him, and he just barely caught himself before the rest could follow after.

"Stephanie."

He looked back to the corpse, the flies buzzing around his ears and covering every sticky red surface. There was too much of it, too much for her to have walked out, so what had happened to her. His hands tightened on the drill. Who had taken her?

 **o**

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 **Short update, but at least it's an update.**


	4. The more things change

" _Why did you help me?" She poked at the straw of the water glass that was wedged between her legs. She didn't know how much time had passed since she'd first woken there and he hadn't offered her the information._

" _Huh?" He looked up at her from where he'd been sitting half asleep on the floor at her bedside. It was too obvious that he hadn't slept, that he was stuck sitting listening to her nightmares all through the night because she was too scared to wake up alone again and for some reason he cared. She was scared of the silence too, she wanted to hear someone speak, to say something that drowned out the 'bang, bang, bang' that wouldn't fade from her mind, even if she was sure she wouldn't like the words._

" _What even…" She looked down at her hands, so covered in bandages she couldn't use them to lift the glass. He'd changed them just that morning, neatly, professionally, how did he even know how to do that? "What were you doing there?"_

 _He as quiet for a few seconds, his cheek bulging out where he poked it with his tongue, the anger she was so used to seeing from her caretaker flashing behind his eyes for just a moment before he tilted his head back to look at her. "Looking for you."_

 _Despite the copious amounts of water she'd consumed, Steph's throat dried up almost immediately, her eyes fixing on him while his turned from her. "You knew, how did…"_

" _I suspected." A yawn escaped his mouth and he shifted his back against her bed, sliding a little further to the ground. "Couldn't spot ya anywhere else didn't think I'd find ya like…" he shuddered and she remembered the way he'd looked at her when he'd found her, the horror reflected back in his eyes. It was pretty obvious he hadn't thought to find what he had. It didn't answer her first question though._

" _Why?"_

 _He'd smiled at her then, a sad, sardonic thing that brought no light to his eyes. "Can't one former Robin wanna look out for another?"_

O

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 **One year later…**

Gotham cleaned up fast and it cleaned up well. Or, at least, as well as could be expected from a city like Gotham. Only a year had passed since hubris had thrown the city into anarchy and here it was. Shining with wealth from the tops of its highest skyscrapers while poverty and corruption rotted away its roots. Brilliant and dark, beautiful and disgusting. It was the dichotomy that he'd grown with, seen from both sides the way few could say they had.

As much as he hated the place he loved it still, as much as he strayed it was his home for better or worse. He was planning on sticking around for a while this time, a long while, see how much of that rot he could cut away.

He took his time strolling through the streets, keeping himself at ground level so he could get a good view of the Bowery. Best to let them steam a little before he showed up, not too long though, because there was always the chance someone would up and leave. Then he'd have to kill them, and he really didn't want to have to bother with going back and setting everything up again to replace them.

Every so often, more often than was entirely necessary perhaps, he unhooked the palm sized screen attached to his belt and checked the position off the pulsating purple dot. Gotham had healed from the war, but not everything had healed with it, there were things that never would.

He slipped on the helmet only after he'd entered the warehouse – because it had to be a warehouse, is Gotham it could be nothing else – through a back door that hadn't been on the plans – because he'd cut it out of the second floor wall himself.

They were already there, all the slimebags he'd _'invited'_ to this meet. She thought he'd gone a little overboard sending in the fingers of missing lieutenants in the invites, but they were going along with her plan for the other part so didn't have much of a reason to complain. He could hear them now, arguing about which of them has set the thing up, as he watched on from the darkness of the rafters. It was almost cute, watching them try to figure it out. Well, it was almost cute for a while, and then someone had to go and suggest it was the penguin's doing and irritation sapped that out pretty fast and he picked up the AK-47 from where he'd stashed it in a darkened corner beforehand.

"Well, there goes hoping you idiots gained any brain cells." Jason stepped out of the shadows and walked over to lean on the railing, propping his gun on the rusted metal. "It's my meet."

"And who the fuck are you!" The biggest of the bunch demanded, standing from his seat.

"Smoke him." Another said and two of the men standing at the fringes of their table moved to draw their guns, well, had to give that guy points for fast thinking, well, one point because that was a fucking stupid move however fast it was.

Jason pulled his trigger, let loose a hail of bullets on the bodyguards. Everyone in the room dove for cover, knocking over chairs and the table in the attempts to save their over skins. The rat-a-tat of the bullets echoing deafeningly in the open space while they cowered for the seconds it took them to get well and truly shocked before he released the trigger.

"You wanna die there's easier ways to kill yourself!" The one who's tried to order Jason's execution was again the first to act. God he was stupid.

"Yeah, like yelling at the guy who's holding the AK forty-seven." Jason trained the weapon on the man, a wry smirk they couldn't see forming on his lips. They didn't think it was funny, for more than obvious reasons. "Now _sit down_." He demanded. "I won't ask again."

The obeyed, those that could propping themselves on the what was left of the furniture, the rest stood at their previous positions around the table. There, not so fucking hard now was it. Jason took a step away from the railing and stood up to his full height, the screen connected to his belt burning his thigh. Now he could get this over with.

"Listen up you drug peddling scumbags. From now on, we will be running the drug trade. You four are the most prosperous street dealers in Gotham." Unfortunate proof that success and power didn't always go hand in hand. "So we're offering you morons a deal. You go about your business as usual, but kick up forty percent to us. S'a much sweeter deal than the scraps you get from Cobblepot and his freaks. In return you'll have total protection from both him and the bats, but I catch you selling to kids and you're dead, got it?"

He had to deal with these gutter stains for his plans to go smoothly, didn't mean he couldn't put some restrictions on them.

"Okay crazy man this is all very generous, but why the hell should we listen to you?"

"Because without us you won't have a drug trade."

And here was where things got tricky. His idea would have gotten the message through a lot faster, but if hers went off then maybe it would stick for a while longer. Jason flicked the trigger out of his sleeve and the T.V he'd set in the corner, hidden in dust, came to life.

At first his captive audience look more confused than anything else, then the buildings, various warehouses, suburban homes and abandoned tunnel offshoots covering the screen must have clicked.

"Look familiar?" He leaned on the railing again, cocking his head to the side and leaning casually against the railings again. "Those are your biggest in city suppliers. I'll give you a minute to memorize them," he paused, giving the scumbuckets a chance to let out a few curse words and mutter about hiding evidence from the cops. "Cause this is the last you'll see them."

At once, every building on the screen erupted into flames, those in less crowded areas spewing rock and rebar as they blew to bits from within. Millions of dollars there, the neatly stacked bags of poison burned and melted into nothing right before their eyes. Jason regretted not having time to install sound, but the sudden silence was, he had to admit, immensely satisfying in its own way.

He let them keep their silence, checked the tracker again while he had the seconds to spare, still in place, no new communications on the comm channels. All it took to get their attention back on him was switching off the T.V.

"Make no mistake, you're not irreplaceable, we're not _'asking'_ you to kick in with us, we're telling you." He aimed the AK again and before he'd even fired, they were ducking for cover, burying their faces in their arms as if that could have saved them if he'd actually been aiming for their damned heads. Jason snorted and dropped a smoke bomb, then, slinging the gun over his back, he disappeared.

O

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Steph had been both amazed and disheartened by how similar the Gotham she'd returned to was from the one she'd left. It was stupid, but for a long while she'd hoped that _'something'_ good could come out of what had happened. So much had stayed the same, too much.

The pier was in sight of the origin of the smoke and ashes than clung to her thick, triple weave reinforced kevlar coat, it was also in sight of Arkham, the dark, foreboding shape of the asylum just a boat ride away. If she turned her head, she'd see the tops of the stadium where she'd heard majority of the fighting had taken place. It was back in use now; there'd be a big game the next weekend.

Nothing to show for anything that had happened, nothing but fewer plots in a cemetery that had already been filling up way too fast. Steph dusted the ash off her shoulder and stood, shoving her hands deep within the pockets of her coat, hand closing around her burner cell as sirens screamed in the distance.

That was the whole point wasn't it? That Gotham refused to change, it was old and set in its ways, just like its protectors. Well she'd changed, she'd changed a lot.

The burner vibrated and Steph pulled it out of her pocket, ducking into and alley as she put it to her ear. "So, how'd it go?" she asked, forcing enthusiasm into her voice despite the anxiety bubbling away at her chest.

' _Think they short circuited, I'd give em a couple days to think it over.'_ He said then gave a low whistle. _'Can see the wreckage at crown point from here, you finish the ammonium nitrate?'_

"No." Steph lied, a grin forming on her face, that must have bled through in her voice and he gave an unimpressed huff that sounded more like a burst of static on her end. "Toldya it'd work out, those creeps car more about their money than their guys."

Jason hummed non-commitally, he'd really wanted to do things the messier way and no thank you, the fingers were bad enough, his plan was just plain gross. _''M heading back to base, 'f the nitrate's finished_ 'you're' _picking up more.'_

"Fiiiine." Steph kicked a beer can down the alley, listening to its scrapes echoing along. The nitrate guy was all the way in Bludhaven, and if it had been a dump before, after chemo it was a veritable hell mouth. Was worth it though with so many drugs of so many kinds off the streets, prices would need to be jacked up and there was just that much less to go around. That much less for little kids to watch their mothers shooting up on. "How long you think it's gonna take him to notice."

Jason scoffed. _'Look at the sky.'_

Steph ducked her head out of the alley to see Gotham's smoggy sky and there, shining brightly against the sky, was the Batsignal. "Oh." She blinked up at it and stepped out of the alley to begin the walk back to their safehouse. "That was fast."

' _You brought down the equivalent of a city block 'F he didn't see it he's blind, see you at home, Hood out._ ' And the line went dead. Steph ran a hand through her short hair, turning to her reflection in a storefront window as she strode by.

This was it, she was really back, and this time she wasn't a terrified girl watching a Crimelord meet she'd set up go to hell and drag the whole city along with it. She was stronger now, and she knew what she was doing, this time, she swore, something was going to change.

Her eyes turned from the glass, up to the Gotham skyline that stretched out before her. "Hello Gotham."

O

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The placement, far as he could tell, had been perfect, the explosive power just high enough to reduce the buildings to rubble without damaging the infrastructure of the surrounding structures. It hadn't been as simple as a rival drug lords taking out the competition. That was a level of professionalism they would've barely been able to afford let alone bother with. Let alone all at once.

There was no retaliation, nothing so much as tags in rival territories. If anything, things had gotten quieter. The owners of the warehouses all claimed no knowledge of what their properties had housed. So far, there was nothing to say what components the explosives comprised of aside from the barest traces of an accelerant.

No leads, nothing to trace, and so far, no one was talking. Bruce turned away from the glare of the bat computer's screen and its non-answers. He shifted his attention instead to the case standing innocently across the room, the eyes of the empty domino cutting deep passed the armor of the suit covering his chest.

Something was starting in his city, something big; he only hoped that this time he'd be able to catch it before it spread out of control.

 **O**

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 **This is very similar to UTRH right now, but it diverges really soon.** **Dick will make his appearance in the next chapter**


	5. Bludhaven Visit

"Weren't you just in here last week?" The grungy guy falling asleep at his desk gave Steph a once over, his bland expression unchanged. Way to make a customer feel welcome.

"I have a big garden." Steph dropped the weighty duffle bag in the counter and folded her arms.

"You should be more careful what you let on the news." He sniffed loudly and briskly rubbed the sleeve of his arm over his nose. Gross.

"Why are you watching Gotham's news." Steph squinted at him and stepped back, using a quick inspection of the pot plants lining one grey wall to cover the motion.

The guy just rocked back on his chair and fixed her with a level gaze, his mouth partly open as though she'd asked him a ridiculous question.

Steph shook the question from her head. "That's why I need more, my gardens all blew up. PSHEW!" She mimed an explosion with her hands, spreading them out as close to his face as she dared. "It was terrifying, I'm pretty sure your stuffs faulty." She rested her elbows on his desk, mentally cringing at the ingrained dirt; damn she would have hated working at a plant store. "You should proly give me a discount." Steph patted the bag. "Car's out back."

Bludhaven stank, not an insult just a literal assessment of how the place smelt. It had been almost a year since The Society had dropped Chemo on the city, and the smell of charred tar and burning chemicals still clung to absolutely everything, as though they'd wanted to burn it into the stone and mortar of the buildings they hadn't felled. Something to remind them that nothing had made it through the attack unscathed.

Steph hated the city, hated it more than she'd hated almost any of the other places she'd visited. Doing shady business in Bludhaven she understood, but actually living here? More than just the smell was the morose, defeated way the remaining inhabitants carried themselves. There was no hope to be found in Bludhaven, and that was a veritable breeding ground for the only sorts of people those sorts of conditions benefitted, only the desperate and those who preyed on them remained. They were the absolute worse part of it all. She really, really hated it, and Jason, the asshole knew it.

Worst part was there was nothing Steph could do to get out of it. She _'had'_ been a little liberal with the ammonium nitrate, and it had been worth it, mostly. Now she just wanted to get out before one of those damned meta gangs that dominated the city attacked her. Fighting metas was a freaking pain in the ass.

Steph puffed out her cheeks as she let out a deep sigh, watching the traffic crawl along the streets. It wasn't because there was a hell of a lot people passing through the city each day, more because of the state of the roads that made it slow going for those who _'did'._ Her pale blue pickup truck was no exception. She'd put off the trip too long, and if traffic didn't pick up soon she wasn't going to have time to gear up.

She leaned back in her seat and watched slow movement of the buildings outside her window as she drummed her fingertips against the steering wheel. Her mouth felt dry and she licked her lips, she didn't check the phone in her pocket, she could feel it pressing up against her thigh. Her coat was back at the safehouse. Leaving it there has been stupid. Bringing it with her everywhere was just as stupid. It was so freaking hot, and her aircon only pumped the truck full of Bludhaven's filthy air.

Her head lolled back against her cushioned seat and she counted the pieces of junk in one alley a little ahead of her, waving her face with one of her hands. One, two, three, four… someone walked by, displacing the mess and screwing with her count. There was room to move forwards just a little more, she had a better vantage point now and she could see still more of the junk. She started counting again. Got to twelve before someone else walked through, then nine, then sixteen, then four, man did that guy have a mean look on his face.

For all she knew it was a drug deal, or there was a club entrance near that way. It was none of her business; handling Gotham was going to be hard enough without taking on extra projects. Bludhaven was too slippery. There was a parts shop just five spaces from the alley. A guy walked out, his eyes darting about like a fox going for a stroll through a wolf pack's territory. He was going to turn down the alley, she could tell.

So he was selling them car parts or something. 'Trust your gut' was one of the things she'd unlearned under Batman – Bruce – and had forced back into her after, she still wasn't used to it yet. The guy's hands were empty, no backpack. Traffic was moving slowly, checking it out real quick wouldn't make much a difference, but if traffic moved in while she was gone...She really didn't want to be late.

"Don't do it." She mumbled, watching the guy keep on his path, he slowed down when he reached her counting alley. Traffic, thankfully, mercifully started moving on forwards. "Finally." Steph shifted gears, and moved with it. The guy turned down the alley. There was a scream. She'd moved too far to see it.

"Damnit." Steph grabbed the gun from her cubbyhole along with the rubber cartridge and scooped up her dark hoody as she left her car. Making it so none of them could breathe fire this time was the least her crappy luck could to for her. It was too hot for metas.

Should have brought her coat.

The building was easy to scale, even without a grapple line, pockmarked as it was. Soon as she reached the top, she sprinted across it for the alley in question. Parts-shop Guy was sobbing now, someone twice his size holding him up by his shirt against the wall, bruised and bloody now, a trio of knives pressed up against him.

Steph didn't bother announcing her presence; she clicked off the pistols safety and let a hail of rubber bullets do that for her. The muggers, or whatever they were, fell to the ground screaming, the _'bang, bang, bang'_ covering the sound. She dropped down in front of Parts Guy and made a show of cocking the gun, a purely cosmetic thing.

"N… N, Nightwing." One of them, a tall guy with a red beanie stared at her wide eyed, frozen for just a second, the kind of fear she was used to seeing only after she and Jason had spent a couple nights in a place burning in his eyes. It got the others attention and before Steph had the chance to do much of anything, they were running scared, a couple screaming even. Over Nightwing?

The hell?

Steph turned to the guy she's just saved, cowering away from her. That's where she left him, he wasn't going to die and he was close enough to work that he could call whatever passed for law enforcement around here. There was snooping to be done.

O

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O

For all its size, New York was not awash with readily available, steady jobs. Dick had been in the city two months and all he had to show for it was the three-pack of burritos in his hand and a drafty loft he'd be out of soon unless he managed to find said steady job.

The elevator jerked to a halt and Dick's body reluctantly unstuck itself from the wall he'd been supporting his weight against. His feet dragged across the ground, disturbing the bits of paint that had chipped from the walls.

Shoes were kicked off, two fingers went up to his throat to loosen the already loose tie around his neck, he let the strip of fabric fall to the ground as he lumbered forwards, only half awake, his crumbled shirt following shortly after.

The bag with the rest of his clothes was right across the room, he didn't fell up to traversing the distance, besides it was the case he hadn't opened since arriving, sitting innocuously in the corner. His eyes lingered on it for just a second before he grunted and steered himself in the direction of his fridge, where he deposited the burritos after fishing one out of the bag while he shook his left leg to get his pants off.

The sofa was hard, but it was so much closer than his bed, so he let himself fall into it, feel the cool of the cotton seeping in through his thin vest. By the time he took a bite of the burrito, it was already cold. Alfred would have been appalled.

But then, he would have been appalled at the whole, Dick sitting in his underwear in the couch he planned to sleep on thing too, it wasn't like the cheap takeout added much to that. Dick took a bigger bite, then he scrubbed his free hand over his tired, prickly face, trying to massage some life back into it. His meal was finished it three more bites. He was still a little hungry, but he'd last a few more hours before he had to get another from the fridge.

Dick ran his hands between the sofa cushions in search of his remote. He tried channel surfing for a while, but with only four channels, that was an exercise in frustration, he settled on Gotham's News Channel – the reason for his lack of many others – and let himself falls over, his eyes on the screen.

An indeterminable amount of time later he was startled awake when the speakers jumped from near mute to max volume. Dick leaped up, almost off the sofa entirely, his hands pressing at his chest, his eyes darting around for danger. He glared down at the remote he'd rolled onto as though it had offended him on a great level.

Dick sighed and raised the thing to turn down the volume. Vicky Vale was on T.V and Dick frowned, he'd never quite gotten over his childhood dislike of the woman, certainly all the times news people had harassed his family had something to do with that. Still, she at least _'tried'_ to be honest and that was more than he could say for a lot of them.

'... _only one of was caught on camera, the effects of the many homes, storehouses and even a parking garage, are felt just as strongly.'_ He was willing to bet that camera footage had been what had woken him. _'Sources within the GCPD say many of the locations were at once point cased for connections with organized crime and eye witnesses time each explosion only seconds apart. Barely a year since the Gotham was embroiled in a city wide free for all between its many gangs, could a new player be making a belated move? And what will it mean for our hard won stability? This is Vicky Vale, reporting from…'_

Dick turned off the T.V and immediately went to retrieve his cellphone from his discarded pants over by the fridge. Another gang war? But that couldn't be right. Bruce would have called in reinforcements, called in at least one of them if there was a chance of something like that happening again. It was probably just reporter exaggeration again.

His finger paused above the dial button. Bruce would have called someone, maybe that someone wouldn't have necessarily been Dick. He licked his lips, eyes turning to the wide windows and there view of the sparkling city outside. It wasn't as if he was having much luck setting up in New York just yet anyway. He could stand to visit Gotham for a few days, just to check up on things.

His exhaustion all but forgotten, Dick backed away from Bruce's number and scrolled through his contacts for another. It wouldn't help for him to show up for a visit if they were out of the country again.

Alfreds number came up and Dick hit dial.


End file.
